Before I started writing UNTAMED, I had
rather specific ideas for the landscapes in mind. I knew the world needed to be
harsh and ‘unfamiliar’, and that the difficult landscapes would heighten the
survival focus of the story. But I wanted the landscapes to feel new to me too,
to provide me with a challenge. I wanted the setting to be exciting, and have
an ‘exotic’ element which would interact with the fantasy side to the book.
But, at the same time, I wanted the landscapes to be believable and realistic.
And this meant a lot of research.
So, I started off with some general Google
searches, looking for landscapes that felt ‘right’ or partly suitable—anything
that really started to inspire me. (Unfortunately, I only discovered Pinterest
a month before UNTAMED released… oops). I made hundreds of notes, poured
through thousands of images of real-life places, noting down things that I
liked from one, and other things from another. A few years ago, I visited Cobo
Bay, in Guernsey, and found it really inspiring. It felt almost magical, with
an unseen supernatural presence. Although no such Cobo Bay made it into
UNTAMED, I drew on the atmosphere a lot. And, I believe, this is where my idea
to include a paranormal element in UNTAMED came from, through the presence of
somewhat dangerous, but hard to see, spirits of the land.
 |
| Figure 1 Cobo Bay, Guernsey |
UNTAMED charts the main characters’ journey
through landscapes that change, setting that are unpredictable and tests their
survival skills. I already knew that I wanted the start and end landscapes to
be vastly different from each other, to mark not only the distance travelled,
but the characters’ emotional journeys—and I had a rough idea of which two
landscapes these could be. But I needed to know how much distance there should realistically
be in between the two climates, and how long it would take for characters to
cross from one to another using different transport, and how one landscape
would gradually merge into the other.
So, I spent a while researching countries
that had two vastly different climates, making loads of notes, and bookmarking
hundreds of images. But I couldn’t find any one country that fitted this rather
strict requirement of having the two particular landscapes that I wanted for
the beginning and end, and
immediately inspired in me the same ambience for spirits and a paranormal
element, that Cobo Bay did —or at least not from Google images. But the more I
searched, the more I did find little parts of different places that were
perfect if I slotted them together across my landscape spectrum (as I called
it). And it wasn’t long before my Untamed landscape was an amalgamation of a
variety of real life landscapes, and my imagination. And I was so excited. I
had the perfect world mapped out for the plot to take place—but, so to speak, I
hadn’t filled the map in. It was just an outline, as I hadn’t experienced all
the climates myself.
If you’re read UNTAMED, you’ll know it
starts in the desert, before the characters journey through a variety of
landscapes, featuring rock formations, jungles, moorland and lakes. Living on
the edge of Dartmoor, UK, I was most confident writing the scenes where the
landscape was mainly moorland, covered in rock formations and tors.
 |
| Figure 2 Dartmoor Wild Ponies |
I knew Dartmoor, but the other landscapes…
well, I had no idea. But I felt so inspired by the images I had seen, that I
knew I had to include them. And for that, I had to rely on research.
I started by researching habitable deserts,
learning about the different types of sand, the climate, that sort of stuff.
Yet for me the landscapes were more than just setting. The landscapes were the
homes of the characters, and were tied intrinsically to the system of spiritual
beings that I would create. To an extent, the landscapes controlled the
characters and their actions, and the characters were fighting back, trying to
gain the upper hand. Because UNTAMED is essentially a story about survival in
near-impossible circumstances, I had to make everything difficult. By picking
climates that made even the small tasks difficult for my characters, I learnt a
lot about how to survive in extreme circumstances. And I learnt some
fascinating stuff.
But it soon became clear to me that because
I hadn’t personally experienced these climates, this was going to be a problem.
There was only so much I could learn from the Internet, and I desperately
wanted my writing to be authentic. With no way to physically visit a desert, I
had to come up with ways around this.
I drew on previous holidays I’d been on—one
to the Mallorcan mountains in particular, and I focussed on the dry climate, the
food, the weather patterns, the buildings, the architecture. I loved how the
mountains seemed to rise around the houses, as if protecting the villages. And
the dry, dusty ground definitely made its way into the opening chapters of
UNTAMED.
 |
| Figure 3 Valldemossa, with the Mallorcan Mountains behind. |
But the most valuable research I did was
through visiting two large biomes in Cornwall, UK. Each biome has a completely
different atmosphere to UK weather, and houses several different climates. I
was able to take a walk through a Mediterranean landscape, South African
landscape, a Californian landscape, and a tropical rainforest—each biome
section complete with birds and other wildlife too!
Okay, so these weren’t exactly deserts, but
they helped me immensely—and tropical rainforests do play a part toward the end
of UNTAMED, as the characters are forced to keep moving through changing
landscapes.
When I was at the biomes I really got a
feel for these new landscapes. I spent hours in each one, just listening and
getting a feel for the place. They felt exciting. And they were
inspiring—exactly what I wanted!
In one, the heat was dry and the air felt
‘thinner’; in another , the air was heavy, humid and muggy. I could hear the
thick buzzing of insects, see the birds in the canopies, touch the old twisted
trunks of olive trees. There was also a mine of information about the plants in
the biomes too. I learnt which plants needed to have waxy leaves to survive,
how they stored water for so long if they were in the drier landscapes, and
which ones people used for food or building materials.
And, not only that, but the biomes also had
traditional houses, African totem poles and shamanic wall paintings too.
Sculptures were everywhere. Agricultural machinery was also present, and it
felt so real. Just walking around these biomes helped me with the sensory
descriptions in UNTAMED. The more I stayed there, the more inspired I felt.
I made pages and pages of notes—and later,
I learnt that you could go inside the biomes on Google Street View too! But
perhaps the most important thing that these biomes taught me was how people
survive in these climates, what their routines are, and how different their
culture is from ours. And once I knew this, my characters really came to life.
Because UNTAMED has strong fantasy
elements, I realised that if I wanted those to be believable to readers, then
everything else—including the fictitious landscapes—had to be absolutely as
realistic as I could possibly get them.
Yet, at the same time, I think you can see
my own culture in this book. The setting for UNTAMED really is an amalgamation
of so many things—and that’s what made it fascinating to me. There are the
‘exotic’ landscapes, and then there are more western belief systems
incorporated in, and a whole bunch of other stuff, including the presence of
spirits. I wanted this book to blend a lot of things together in a somewhat
ambiguous way. After all, the Untamed world is a turbulent, ever-changing
place, and I want my readers to feel a little of the disorientation that my
characters experience.
If writing this book has taught me
anything, it’s just how important the setting is in a book. It had to feel real
for me, for it to feel real for my characters. The landscapes of UNTAMED play
an integral role, testing both the characters who live there, and myself as a
writer.
Madeline Dyer is the author
of Untamed, a YA dystopian fantasy novel from Prizm Books (May 2015).
She is currently working on book two in the Untamed Series, as well as a new
dystopian trilogy for adults. Aside from writing, Madeline enjoys reading,
painting, and inline skating.
Madeline can be found at:
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